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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Rules and Stuff1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.16) All polls will be open for three days.

In match 2.17, Dionaea muscipula made a good effort against Aeschynanthus cvv., but faded early, letting Aeschynanthus accumulate a slight lead. Which then turned into a bigger lead. Dionaea loses, 48 to 64.Match 2.18 was a bit more complicated -- this was another one where the contestants swapped the lead back and forth a number of times before settling on a winner. In the end, Aechmea fasciata just didn't quite have what it took, falling to Spathiphyllum cvv. by 54 to 61.

Pilea involucrata 'Norfolk' didn't really stand a chance against Chlorophytum comosum, in match 2.19: it lost 36 to 78.In match 2.20, Echeveria cvv. (and relatives) absolutely beat the tar out of Kalanchoe luciae / thyrsiflora, winning 91 to 23. This is the second time that Echeveria et al. have gotten more than 75% of the vote; the only other competitor to do so thus far has been Saintpaulia cvv. This may mean that Echeveria is a serious contender for the championship, but it could also mean that it got some exceptionally wimpy opponents. Time will tell.

We are now ready to begin the third-round voting. I'm slowing things down a little and only posting two matches per day during round 3. I'll slow down even further (to one match per day) once we start round 4, about a week from now.

1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?

Took dozens of pictures while throwing the tennis ball a few days ago, and I thought this was the most interesting of the ones that were at all in focus. (There was one really incredible one of Sheba with her mouth thrown back over her back, wide open, showing all her teeth, with the ball a short distance above her mouth. It was similar to the one above, actually, but she was more artfully posed. It was also too out of focus to be useful.)

Having her chin scratched rates pretty highly, but I think chasing tennis balls or her glowy ball is pretty much Sheba's favorite thing to do.

Friday, October 14, 2011

Rules and Stuff1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.16) All polls will be open for three days.

No huge surprises here. This set was 3/4 about pretty and colorful plants advancing past plants that are less pretty and colorful. In 2.13, Platycerium spp. beat Gynura aurantiaca 77 to 42, probably because when it comes right down to it, Gynura is just not a very popular plant. (It only made it into the second round because it was paired with Hypoestes phyllostachya, which people really hate, in the first.) I'd worried about 2.14, but Schlumbergera cvv. did defeat Aloe vera like I'd hoped, and by a wider margin than I expected. The score was 78-46.

1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?

A lot of things aren't working properly for me at the moment (oddities with loading certain websites, a literal headache, a bureaucratic thing which prompted an unscheduled trip to Iowa City yesterday -- and no, Mercury is not in retrograde), so tasks like e-mail and plant-watering are piling up, necessitating a transmitted light post.

Weigela sp. I really like this kind of leaf. Not particularly taken with the plant (one came with the house: it isn't causing any problems, and it's impressively large, but it doesn't do much for me either. Considering how difficult it is to get enough light in the house, I'd really sort of prefer that we not have anything tall in or near the house at all. But it's probably staying anyway.

Dieffenbachia NOID. I keep seeing this variety over and over, but I have no idea what it's called. My best guess is 'Golden Sunset,' but given how many varieties there are, and how variable the leaves may be, a lot of them sort of shade into one another, and it's hard to be very sure.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Rules and Stuff1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.16) All polls will be open for three days.

In 2.9, Phalaenopsis/Doritaenopsis cvv. jockeyed for the lead against Monstera deliciosa. I lost track of how many times they switched places, but each was in the lead at least three times. By the beginning of the third day of voting, Monstera had managed a lead of about four votes, which would ordinarily mean that it was very likely to win (the votes usually slow down a lot after the first 24 hours of voting), but then reader/commenter Paul posted this at OrchidBoard.com,2 and soon Phalaenopsis were up by three votes. I was personally kind of rooting for Monstera, but this sort of advocacy is explicitly permitted and encouraged by the rules I set up (see #2 at the top of the page), so oh well. Phalaenopsis wins, 67 to 62.Match 2.10 wasn't as dramatic, just surprisingly close: Araucaria heterophylla and Sansevieria cylindrica were stem and stem until the very end, when Araucaria gained and held a narrow lead, winning 60 to 53.

So, Phalaenopsis/Doritaenopsis will be competing with Araucaria heterophylla in match 3.5, voting for which begins on 17 October.

Match 2.11 was another extremely tight race: in the end, Cereus peruvianus barely won, 59 to 54, defeating Dracaena marginata cvv.The only battle where the victor was pretty obvious early on was in match 2.12: Hoya carnosa cvv. defeated Maranta leuconeura cvv. by 73 to 46. This would please me regardless, because I've had better experiences with Hoya, but I take particular satisfaction in this case because Maranta was the plant that knocked Anthurium out of the contest.

Cereus peruvianus and Hoya carnosa cvv. next appear in match 3.6, which also begins on 17 October.

1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?2 If you are not already a member of OrchidBoard, you may be taken to a page telling you this, but you can still see the message as a guest if you go to the main forum page (link should be near the top of the "you're-not-a-member" message), then to "Off Topic - Totally" (the very last subcategory in the forums, then to the "Orchids are in need of votes folks!" message.

Ascocendas are crosses between Ascocentrum and Vanda. You can see the Vanda parentage pretty easily in the shape and size of the flowers; I can't quite figure out what the Ascocentrums are contributing. (Do a Google image search, if you're not already familiar with Ascocentrum.)

The tag ("Ascda. Raminda Gold x Ascda. Fortune East") was wrong on this plant; about 40-50% of the plants at the Illowa Orchid Show (Wallace's Garden Center hosts the show, but it's the Illowa Orchid Society's deal.) are mis-tagged in some way or another. "Raminda" should be "Ram Indra" or "Ramindra." Both the one- and two-word versions are common enough on the net that I don't know which is officially correct.

I like the flower, though. I mean, I tend to think Vandas are pretty anyway, but the patterning on this one is interesting. The Ascocendas to come (December and March) aren't nearly this neat, and photographed even less well than this besides.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Rules and Stuff1) It's probably possible to vote more than once per poll, but please don't. If I believe that someone is voting repeatedly, I will throw out those results, repost the poll, and seriously question that person's priorities.2) If you want to link to a poll on Twitter / Facebook / your blog / whatever and encourage your friends to come and pump up the support for your favorite plants, you are encouraged to do so.3) You are also encouraged to leave comments on Rumble posts, if so moved.4) All photos will enlarge if opened in a separate window/tab.5) You can choose which plant is "best" according to whatever criteria you decide for yourself. My personal process is a bit convoluted.16) All polls will be open for three days.

Match 2.5 to 2.8 results:

Matches 2.5 and 2.6 weren't particularly surprising. In the first, Dracaena reflexa cvv. defeated Asparagus spp. 76 to 37, which is only logical considering how Asparagus spp. are kind of dicks, with the thorns and everything. (I'm left more mystified than ever as to how Asparagus managed to defeat Cissus rhombifolia and get to the second round at all, though.) In match 2.6, Aglaonema cvv. beat Oxalis triangularis cvv., 70 to 43, which is likewise pretty much what I expected. (Oxalis made a better showing than I thought it would, but I'm not very objective when it comes to Aglaonemas.)

Dracaena reflexa and Aglaonema go up against one another in match 3.3, which will begin on 16 October.

Matches 2.7 and 2.8, on the other hand, did surprise me quite a bit. Not necessarily the winners (I voted with the victor in both cases), but that neither match was particularly close. They were both pretty tough choices for me. In match 2.7, Strelitzia nicolai and reginae defeated Ficus maclellandii by 70 to 43. Sad to see Ficus go, but I knew when I started this that most of the plants I liked would not win, so I have only myself to blame. Finally, Philodendron hederaceum cvv. beat Dracaena fragrans cvv. to a sappy pulp in match 2.8, winning by a score of 82 to 28.

1 I'm deciding according to a hypothetical situation in which all of my houseplants are gone, as are all the other houseplants of the world, except for one producer/supplier/retailer. Said person is offering to restock me with one or the other of the plants in question but refuses to give me both. Which one would I choose?

Someone visited PATSP last week via a Google search for "is euphorbia milii a bad luck plant," or something to that effect. Which is interesting. So I googled it myself, which brought me to this page, in which the author had received a question from someone wanting to know if her mother's recurrent, advanced cancer was related to the E. milii plants she'd grown "multiple varieties" of, and if so, whether she should destroy the plants.

Euphorbia milii.

So far, so heartbreaking, but the post attracted a comment confirming that the plant was terrible, and harbored bad spirits, and would kill entire families given half a chance to do so, as demonstrated by the sad (unconfirmable) case of someone (no name given) in the Middle East (country unspecified) who owned one, whose entire family died (by unspecified means), so then he was going to destroy the plant (because somehow he knew the plant was responsible?), but then another guy (likewise unnamed) saw the plant before it was destroyed and took a piece of it home with him to the Philippines. At which point the anecdote stopped because the comment-writer got distracted or something, but I assume s/he was going to go on to say that that person's whole family died horribly as well: s/he was very clear that E. milii was a bad, terrible, no good, evil, dangerous plant which should be eradicated from the face of the earth.1

Which is of course makes the situation that much worse, because now not only did the original questioner's mother have recurrent, advanced cancer, but I'm guessing her daughter also probably collected and destroyed her Euphorbia milii collection, which for all we know had been the woman's pride and joy for years.2

So that got me thinking about the concept of "bad luck" plants in general. I'd never heard of Euphorbia milii being bad luck before, much less harboring evil spirits, so I figured there were probably lots of other so-called "bad luck" plants I'd just not heard of before. So I googled. And boy, are there.

But first, let me just say -- the below is mostly pharmaceutical-grade bullshit. Plants don't contain or attract evil spirits; you're not going to change your life by buying, rearranging, or discarding them; they don't bring good or bad luck. Good stuff happens. Bad stuff happens. Because the good and bad stuff happens randomly, some people get more of it than others, but that doesn't have anything to do with what plants people grow. I mean, if having lucky bamboo nearby were actually lucky, then the people of Cameroon, where D. sanderiana is native, would be the wealthiest, happiest, longest-lived people in the world, yes? And yet.3

As has always been the case, the way to live a life of minimal unpleasantness is to be rich and powerful or related to someone who is. The plants you grow or don't grow are really not factors. (And anyway, if you're going to avoid everything on this list, you may as well just give up trying to grow plants, period.)

I've linked the sources for the various claims of bad luck, and either quoted or summarized the relevant parts. All quotations are [sic]. Sometimes I've added my own comments to the end.

"Am I the only who has herd this one before? If you own a spider plant you will be cursed with bad luck. So anyone herd this old tale or know someone who owned the plant and had bad luck until getting rid of it? Odd I can't seem to find anything online about the topic but I herd it from someone so I wondered what you all thought." (-PillsburyDoughboy)My comment: the general consensus from the people who replied was that either 1) they're not bad luck, or 2) that they might be, but everybody really hoped they weren't.4

Summary: unlucky as a gift, "a person who grows ivy will always be poor," only permissible indoors as Christmas decoration.My comment: you may as well go ahead and take this as true, because Hedera are often lousy houseplants. It's not that they're unlucky, just that they're unsuited to indoor cultivation unless you have a cool, bright, moist home, which few of us do.

"Some say that its bad luck to grow aloe vera plant at home, is it true?" (-ahelas_123)My comment: the few people who replied said no, not bad luck.

Any and all thorny/spiky plants, especially cacti (probably also includes Pachypodium, Agaves, most Euphorbias, Pandanus veitchii, and pretty much anything else that could be worth growing). Shown: unidentified cactus.(link)

Summary: thorny plants shouldn't go inside the home or close to one's front door, but you can plant as many as you like outside the house.

Summary: Friends of the author's suffered terrible catastrophes (unspecified) after putting cactus plants on their windowsills, because cacti send out "little slivers of bad energy" which accumulate like dust bunnies until something bad happens.6 Then the friends took the cacti away and the bad things stopped happening.

"many people say that cactuses are bad luck especially if you place it inside your home, but i don't believe in that stupid idea, whoever said that, well i'm so sorry but i really don't believe you... I really love plants, i have my collection of cactuses at home, i just love them, they're very nice to look at..." (-Cosepqueenie)My comment: replies amounted to one person saying "well, you don't have to believe it, sweetie" and two bits of spam.

"The Murraya is a silent, slow killer. Those flu symptoms that you have been experiencing are thanks to the innocent looking orange jasmine. Get rid of it NOW or face a lifetime of illness." (Anonymous PATSP commenter, whose family is apparently allergic to the plant, which is a very different thing from the plant being a "silent, slow killer."8)

"Some people believe red ti plant invites bad luck."My comment: the page also says that "Hawaiians think this plant is a charm against evil," which means that whether good things or bad things happen to you after buying a red ti plant, the page predicted that it would happen.

Summary: Cordyline is a low-maintenance and colorful plant which is often grown in Singaporean cemeteries, because it's low-maintenance and colorful. Consequently, people believe it to be bad luck, because if it isn't bad luck then what's it doing in all those cemeteries, with the dead people?

Summary: [every bad thing that's happened to five (?) different families over a period of several years] (-tablariddim)The original questioner hasn't considered the possibility that bad things often happen in close proximity to pothos because everyfuckingbody has a pothos.

Summary: Night-blooming plants are unlucky because in some cultures, suddenly detecting a flower's scent indicates the presence of spirits nearby. (See Musa and Ensete spp. below.) Also white is the color of death and mourning in these cultures too, so the fact that many night-opening flowers are also white just makes them that much scarier.My comment: night-blooming flowers do tend to be fragrant or white or both, because both qualities make it easier for nocturnal pollinators to locate the flower.

Summary: Banana trees are believed to contain spirits called "Pontianaks" who are the ghosts of women who died in childbirth. Pontianaks appear in the form of beautiful women, "dig into the . . . stomach with long sharp fingernails," and eat "it" (presumably the stomach?). They also attack pregnant women, and announce their presence by the smell of jasmine or Plumeria, followed by a horrible stench. A pontianak can be controlled by tying a red thread around a banana tree and tying the other end to the foot of one's bed; it then has to do the bidding of whoever tied the thread or whoever sleeps in the bed or something like that. (Site wasn't specific.)

Summary: the Thai word for Plumeria means sadness, so obviously it's bad luck. It's believed to house the ghosts of evil people. Plus there's the whole thing about smelling the fragrance when a pontianak is nearby.

Summary: plants blooming out of season were thought to be "touched by the devil."I assume this would apply to plants that were chemically induced to bloom, so most store-bought Spathiphyllums, Schlumbergeras and bromeliads, would probably qualify. Also Euphorbia pulcherrima are usually induced to bloom a bit earlier than they normally would, in order to sell at Christmas, so they'd at least sort of count. (And we all know that poinsettias are touched by the devil regardless.) Probably lots of other things too.

No doubt I've missed some: it's difficult subject matter for a Google search, because one also runs into a lot of pages where people say they have bad luck with this plant or that plant, which is obviously different from having bad luck due to the plant. So let me know if you run into other examples.

yeah.. its true.. the plant euphorbia is “MALAS”.. it has a bad spirit.. that causes many sickness.. and can cuase death for the whole family who lives in the house with euphorbia plants.. it is proven.. ive searched about this plant.. that is from the middle east.. one man there that owns that plant .. his family was died becauseof that plant.. after of wat happened to his famiy he decided to destroy it. but before he destroy it a seaman saw it and get one of it.. and that seaman brought it in the phillipines.. it is proven that if you have that plant in your house your family will always get sick.. that sometimes causes death for the whole family.. because that plant grows even you dont watered him.. it is beautiful to see.. but it brings badluck to your life.. so if you dont want bad luck happens to you and to your family.. destroy that plant.. and its better to tell it to your other friends about it.. to prevent the growing numbers of that plant.. im juz a concerned citizen.. thats why im telling you this. its all up to you if your going to beleive it..

[sic, obviously]2 (I mean, maybe not, but the plants must have been around for a while: if they were new, it wouldn't make any sense to blame them for the cancer. Not that it makes sense to blame them for the cancer anyway, but you know what I'm saying.)3 One could make a fairly strong argument that Japanese knotweed -- native to prosperous East Asian countries like Japan, China, and South Korea, widespread and invasive in Europe, the U.S., and Canada -- is one of the most potent good-luck plants in the world, based on the economic situations of the countries where it's found. I mean, it would be extremely irresponsible to make that argument, but some people would find it convincing.4 Tip: if you have to hope that it's not bad luck, because you've had a bunch of them for several years, then it's not. You would obviously notice it, if the bad luck were real. As would everybody else who's grown one.5 This site was down when I was trying to write the post, but it worked when I was searching initially, so I don't know whether you'll be able to get to it or not. My recollection is that it said basically the same thing as snopes.com.)6 I don't believe anyone has ever shown any physical evidence for the existence or accumulation of "energy shards," nor measured the rate at which they accumulate, nor defined the quantity necessary to cause "bad luck," nor explained how removing the source makes them go away. (When you remove a shedding dog from a house, does the accumulated hair disappear from the carpet? No? Then why would removing a plant make the accumulated energy shards disappear?) Not that one would necessarily expect this to be the sort of detail you'd go into in the sort of breezy, informal book I've linked to, but -- well, that's sort of the problem: the feng shui community doesn't seem to publish anything that isn't breezy and informal. 7 (No, really, that's pretty much all it says.)8 Among the differences: if you're allergic to plant X, it does not necessarily follow that all human beings are allergic to plant X. Also -- we've had the plant almost five years now: if it's going to kill us, it's taking its time about it.9 (I suspect that most of these aren't actually believed by very many people, even in their country/region of origin.)

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mrsubdjunctive@doutlook.com

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About Me

Mr_Subjunctive used to work at a family-owned greenhouse / garden center in Iowa City, IA. As of 7 December 2016, he has 1588 houseplants, which is both too damn many and not quite enough. Most are Anthuriums.

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Ass-covering legal disclaimer that should really be perfectly obvious to anybody reading this anyway

The thoughts, opinions, life choices, etc. discussed in this blog are those of its author, and are not necessarily endorsed by his former employer, nor were they ever necessarily endorsed by his former employer before she was former. In fact, I'm pretty sure we disagreed about a lot of stuff, which was additional incentive not to discuss anything that didn't relate pretty directly to plants. And as far as it goes, we disagreed about a fair amount of stuff directly relating to plants, too.

In any case. Nothing in this blog should be taken to represent my former employer's views on anything, except for the few things explicitly identified as her opinions, and even then it's possible I've misunderstood or exaggerated what her actual views were. So if you want to know what she thinks about stuff you should just ask her.